The number of businesses
and people accepting Ithaca
HOURS has
nearly tripled in our first three months of operation, from 90 to
230. These participants provide 400 different products and
services, and make 100 different requests. The Ithaca HOUR is
backed by real goods and skills, while the U.S. dollar is backed
by government waste, bank failure and debt.

Worst of all, though, the dollar is declining because
America's natural resource base shrinks. The natural wealth that
fed American factories and filled our stores has been dumped into
landfills. Most of the USA's prime fuels, metals, forests and
fields have been largely used up, requiring us to import more
food, oil and industrial ores.

About 80% of original U.S. oil reserves are gone, and
oil
imports cause half the trade deficit. Nearly all steelmaking and
aluminum depends on imported manganese and bauxite. Nearly all
the basics of industry, like chromium and nickel are imported.
Nearly all uranium and even one third our natural gas is
imported.

Most coal is now stripmined, and these raw cuts have
begun
devouring good cropland. The best soil has already been ruined,
especially by corporate farms. The U.S. Midwest, our nation's
breadbasket, is drying up as the underground water is pumped out.

At the same time, many U.S. corporations globalize,
becoming
no longer American. They use American resources and labor to
enrich themselves, then send jobs overseas. New York state lost
200,000 jobs last year.

This destruction and dependency signals conversion of
the
United States into a Third World nation. There are fewer U.S.
jobs per person and fewer hours per job, paid with weaker
dollars. One seventh of us are impoverished, one tenth use food
stamps. The Tompkins County paycheck, for trades workers, has 8
percent less spending power today than in 1980.

Although this process is happening worldwide and all
nations
are at risk, we may see surprising changes. Russia has fabulous
wealth in metals, forest, oil and natural gas, and so might
become one of the world's great entrepreneurial powers. And we
may see Japan's sun set, when agressive nations change the rules
of commerce, seizing Japan's assets.

None of the above are good changes. To avoid cycles of
gluttony, war and collapse, all nations could develop
environmentally efficient locally-controlled economies

When you use Ithaca HOURS you are part of a healthy
transition. Our Action Ideas column shows other U.S. communities
making similar changes.

Business-as-usual:
Elements of an Unhealthy Economy

Bland
overpackaged chemically-damaged food of
inferior
nutritional value, whose harvest depends on destruction
of soil and harsh use of domestic and foreign labor.

Dependence on automobiles and token funding for bus,
rail
and bikeway systems.

Carcinogenic air and water, especially damaging to
children and elderly, from industrial waste, pesticides
and automobiles. World heat shock from combustion.
Destruction of ozone layer.

Worst health care protection in the industrialized
world.
Most cancers caused by pollution of air and water.

State-imposed schooling which teaches obedience
rather
than thinking.

Use of TV channels for commercial propaganda rather
than
free exchange of ideas.

Ill-paid jobs which
increase the waste of forests,
metals, soil, water and air, and/or which endanger world
peace and worker safety. Loss of jobs overseas and
increase of poorly-paid service jobs.

Military power so huge and corrupt that most of our
nation's wealth is lost supporting war preparation and
inspiring fear in half the world.

Federal policy which rewards dangerous and wasteful
dependence on imported petroleum and uranium while
cutting subsidies for solar and wind power, transit and
railroads.

Democrats and Republicans both promote false beliefs
about our
economy:

Government must allow corporations to pollute, to keep
jobs
here.

However, there are businesses which produce clean goods
without polluting.

America must produce, sell and buy huge quantities of
useless
playthings to keep people employed. But local production and
purchase with net export is sufficient to keep money moving.

Business must create goods of low quality so that they
must be
soon replaced so that profits and jobs are renewed. Yet, the more
careful crafting and manufacture of durable goods will employ far
more people more profitably.

Workers are too dumb to run businesses. On the contrary,
wherever cooperative shop-floor management has been tried,
productivity and profits have risen.